Tag | Software Posts
Something that took me a while to learn is how to be balanced when deciding on how to architect an application. Since at my current job I was thrown into a hybrid Architect/Developer position due to the small size of the company and my team, I didn’t really have any experience with doing it. After almost a year at it I decided to look back and see what I have done and how I can learn from mistakes and successes. Remember Why You Were Hired Why did your company hire you as a developer? If you answered ...
C++ is a very powerful language. Well written native C++ code can perform much better than managed languages like C# and Java due to optimizations that the managed systems are not able to perform during run-time compilation (if this is done at all, that is). This is great for developers who work on gaming technology for instance. For people concerned with game logic, performance isn’t necessarily priority number one, but productivity and the ability to express oneself without too much head banging. ...
All seats were taken at the September IASA Chapter meeting. I opened the meeting with a short introduction of the officers and members of the board of directors as well as mentioning the benefits and opportunities of an IASA membership. Quent Herschelman followed with an introduction of the IASA educational programs and announced the exciting news that the chapter will host an IASA core training in January 2012. You can find more details and can sign up for the training on the IASA global web page. ...
Introduction One of the things that we all look at before we ship software is the performance of our apps. Last November, I posted a quick and easy way to do it in Silverlight. Today, I am going to walk you through doing it in Windows 8 for your Metro XAML applications. After the Build event was over, I was interested in learning how to do this for my Windows 8 Metro Apps. I started watching videos from the Build RSS Feed and noticed this one from Tim Heuer that did just that. Let’s get started Click/Touch ...
Last week I attended Build Windows conference and have been spending a considerable amount of time thinking how things have changed for developers. The initial reaction from most people was “Oh My God” with all the focus on WinRT and Metro UI and little mention of .Net, Silverlight, WPF, etc. You could almost feel the equal parts panic and excitement racing through the crowd. I was fortunate enough to have brought along my “Keep Calm and Carry On” T-Shirt to Anaheim. I wore it on Wednesday as it ...
Our friends at Microsoft have done a wonderful job releasing TFS 2011 preview, there has been great amount of preview documentation and video samples released to help understand the new features. In this blog post I intend to dive deep and compare the database changes done between the two versions of the product. If you are interested to read more about the actual features of TFS 2011, please refer to bharrys blog posts, this, this and this. I’ll be using the following pattern, About the feature ...
As I write this post, Microsoft’s Windows 8-focused //build/ conference has just ended. The apprehension so many developers had around the show is now dissipated, the developer platform and tools have been detailed, and we have all been able to work with the operating system, and develop apps for it, on a touch device, for about 72 hours now. Most people, myself included, like what they saw. The OS is touch-friendly without being an iOS copycat; our developer skill set investments are nicely protected; ...
SourceMonitor V3.1.5.190has been released at http://www.campwoodsw.com/s... "The freeware program SourceMonitor lets you see inside your software source code to find out how much code you have and to identify the relative complexity of your modules." This program allows analysis results to be recorded to a file so that trends can be establised ...
I took this test a few weeks ago and thought I would offer some pointers on how to prepare for this test. I've been doing Silverlight development for over a year full time now, so that obviously helped out a lot. There are some questions about using a ViewModel and setting the right DataContext. So if you've only done code behind, you will be at a disadvantage. A great resource is the Practice Testing Software from Self Exam Engine. I spent around $100 on this software but it was worth it. Many of ...
If you’ll be at the Sharepoint Conference this year, here’s something you’ll want to tuck into your back pocket. See the following information on some cool Sharepoint solutions and some fun stuff to boot, courtesy of my employer. From Oct. 3 to 6 at the SharePoint Conference 2011 in Anaheim, Calif. Neudesic experts will be on hand to demonstrate innovative “SharePoint Plus” solutions. “SharePoint Plus” solutions enhance social, mobile, business intelligence and user experience capabilities to Microsoft’s ...
Programming for Metro Metro is the future http://zd.net/rnT9VZ .NET is for old apps. WinRT replaces WPF & WCF. XAML is big. There were no Silverlight sessions. HTML 5 and Javascript ( Blend for HTML) are back in fashion – I wont dwell on this because web apps are (inconsistently) simplistic in concept and over-complex in development. Yes, all those XAML skills are portable, Silverlight (RIP) apps can run as Metro apps with a bit of fidgeting with namespaces – you just need to know what controls ...
Introduction The conference sessions are starting to appear on the Channel 9 RSS feeds right now. If you are like me then you probably want to download all of them and watch them later. Here is the method that I use to grab all the videos and thought that it would help others. Note: You can use either Juice or PowerShell (which is located at the bottom of this post). Let’s do this with Juice Navigate over to http://channel9.msdn.com/Ev... and select the option to Subscribe to this ...
I am like everyone else when it comes to Preview OS Software. I don’t want it on installed on my primary machine and I don’t want to lug around another laptop to try stuff. I am not a fan of booting of VHD (which I will explain in a second). Scott Hanselman made a great post on how to do this if you are interested however. The main issue that I see with this approach is that the bootloader on my MAIN MACHINE is replaced with the Windows 8 Preview one. Yikes! I don’t want any preview software with ...
So we’re into Day 2 of Build, and the keynote this morning is talking about server and cloud aspects of Windows 8. I’m looking forward to the sessions this afternoon to get some deeper dives. But let’s reflect over yesterday first – Build Day 1. Yes, there was a tablet given away. But those focusing on the “new toy” are missing the bigger message, the larger paradigm shift, the impact on the future of what we’re seeing. I sound melodramatic saying that, but its true – the way development for the ...
In the world of custom web application development a critical component of our success is the hosting environment and services. We can choose to deploy our web applications using 3rd party hosting providers such as GoDaddy.com, Rackspace, DiscountASP.NET, or another provider, or we can choose to deploy to on premise servers either virtual or physical. In either case the web application must be serviced up to consumers by a web server software such as Internet Information Service (IIS), which is included ...
Hi Please refer the link below before building a Custom Adapter in Biztalk . Wizards used from code plex site to build custom Adapter in Biztalk having defect that is not reproducable in System Testing or Integartion Testing that should be reproduce with soak testing or live testing i.e To Save the Cost of Quality of the software developed please refer the below link to fix defects in Requirement stage to coding stage /bloggingabout.net/blogs/we... ...
Recently I attended Microsoft HTML5 WebCamp where I had a chance to get insights on all new features HTML5 has to offer. Couple things to mention: - Canvas - a new HTMl5 feature that uses JavaScript to draw bitmap graphics on a web page. Simple approach (less JS coding) makes this interesting: empty space is treated as a painter canvas and a painter brush is replaced with JavaScript. - SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is another graphic tool widely publicized. It is not new, it has been around for ...
I was really excited when I heard Red Gate wanted a review of their memory profiler done. I have been a fan of Red Gate products for years… being first exposed to their products via reflector a few years ago – as someone who has never done memory profiling before, I was also excited to go a bit deeper into .Net memory management. Why Memory Profiler – Isn’t the point of .Net that it manages the memory for you? Before getting into the nuts and bolts of the profiler, you might ask yourself – why use ...
Today the release candidate of Microsoft’s Silverlight 5 was released to the public. If you want to know “What’s new in Silverlight 5” then check out this page on Silverlight.net and continue reading the article below. Getting Started First, we are going to need to download the required tools to install the Silverlight 5 RC. Before getting started, please note that you can install the Silverlight 5 RC on top of the final release of Silverlight 4. If you have the Silverlight 5 Beta installed, then ...
I found a blog post by Davy Brion (one of my favorite bloggers on the ‘net) that spoke about the .NET world’s current state. He mentioned that Microsoft’s products (such as WebMatrix and LightSwitch) are mainly geared toward what he calls “low-end” developers. At the same time, Microsoft is backing off on other products that more experienced and seasoned programmers like, such as IronRuby, IronPython, and the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime). I certainly agree with some of his points. Applications ...
Having worked with TFS & SVN for a while now, I recently was put in a position where I had to get up to speed with Git. My only experience with Git up to now was attending a brief presentation on the subject and spending a few hours playing around with it – interesting at the time, but foreign enough for me not to hold any strong opinions on the matter. For the last two weeks I have had to get exposure to Git, and after getting over the initial “uncomfortable” stage I must say that Git is seeming ...
Rich internet applications are growing fast in the business and enterprise application landscape as more and more software managers and corporate decision makers are electing to place rich internet applications (RIA's) into their organizations. But with the many advantages of rich internet applications over the client/server deployments, organizations also find many new aspects they need to master and overcome - one of them is understanding the new security vulnerabilities of the rich web based applications ...
It’s been quite a while since I’ve done a GeeksWithBlogs.net Influencers review. This time, I had the opportunity to check out Red Gate’s SmartAssembly 6.1, which is a integrated collection of tools for modifying and manipulating assemblies. Now that phrase, while accurate, is quite a mouthful. So what all does it actually do? SmartAssembly has the ability to: Do strong name signing; Add automated error reporting; Add feature usage reporting; Merge dependencies (e.g. libraries) into the main assembly ...
If your question is, what is this? or perhaps more around … what does this mean? Let me explain a bit about it. Microsoft has been providing this type of services through partners within a given competency to clients that are looking to deploy and implement Microsoft products like SharePoint, Exchange or the strategy behind Windows and Office deployments. The way it works, well you purchase your products and perhaps those products come with Software Assurance and they have training/service credits. ...
Introduction: One of the concerns that I keep hearing from customers is, “We can’t deploy Silverlight because it won’t run on a tablet.” I usually reply to that question stating, “What do you mean it can’t run on a tablet?” They usually looked puzzled and say, “You mean Silverlight *CAN* run on a tablet?” Yes, there are many devices that Silverlight can run on. Today we are going to take a look at the Motion CL900 Tablet. FYI: I have no affiliation with Motion Computing. Why this tablet? When I first ...
I’ve learned, from conference sessions and user group meetings, that Agile is best learned in action – being part of a game or activity that explains Agile, having lively discussion with people, or (best yet) being part of an Agile project. We still get a large amount of learning from books though, and so while Agile books may do a good job explaining the methodologies and techniques, its never as good as having some context to stand it up against. Enter Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken ...
For a period of time, I have access to both an MSDN and a TechNet subscription. Both offer Microsoft software for download. I wondered what the similarities and differences were between the two subscriptions. I copied the two download lists into Excel and aligned them. Most of the material I would never use. Some products I have never heard of. I present the lists, current as of today, for your reviewing pleasure. TechNet MSDN Applications (63) Applications (79) Access 2.0 Access 2003 Access 2003 ...
Recently, I gave a presentation on Flow at Agile Executives. It was a fun meeting and a fun topic and lead to several realizations on my part. First, when Alistair Cockburn is in the audience, I get a bit nervous. Second, Lean and Agile aren’t incompatible, they’re complimentary. Let me explain. The Sterility of Lean Lean tends to think of people as nothing more than metrics. Cogs in the grand scheme of things. Little focus is placed on the human aspect of software development when talking about ...
My Epiphany – Part 1 After reading Continuous Delivery, by Jez Humble and David Farley, I couldn’t help but think “wow! this is the key to becoming truly agile!”. I submit that may be a little overstated, but nonetheless by minor epiphany has grown into an outright passion for enabling rapid development AND delivery of small bite-sized pieces of applications. As we’re all well immersed into the Agile way these days (or, at least, we’re all trying!!), our common goal should be to provide customers ...
Poster-Comment Received a few comments on my Dreams posting and I never realized the posting was that sad/downer. I appreciate the kind words from those who commented. We've all been down a few times in life, kicked in the teeth. The important thing, as you all know, is not that you got knocked down, it's that you pick yourself up, spit out some teeth, and keep going. And, that, my friends is what we all have to do. Spent some time talking to the wife last night, spent some time with the kid, spent ...
In September we will start to deliver monthly workshops on the Windows Azure Platform to help Microsoft partners who are developing software products and services and would like to explore the relevance and opportunities presented by the Windows Azure Platform for Cloud Computing. Overview: The workshops are designed to help partners such as yourself understand what the Windows Azure Platform is, how it is being used today, what resources are available and to drill into the individual technologies ...
This post will focus upon introducing the concepts of AI algorithms, and is summerized from "Artificial Intelligence, A Modern Approach" – by Norvig and Russell - 3rd edition - http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/ . Overview General Definition: study of agents that receive percepts from the environment and perform actions Weak AI hypothesis - assertion that software could simulate thought-like behavior - Can machines think – is considered an ill-defined question (does a submarine swim?). Strong AI hypothesis ...
Everyone has a journey. You start off young & stupid, and 2 decades later, you're closer to understanding the nature of reality. That’s one of the main goals in life, to seek knowledge (justified, true beliefs – pick any 2 J ). I must have read 5000 books in my life. From some of my readings it could be construed that reality computes itself, It from Bit. From others, it can be concluded that Entropy is decreased by increased rates of computation, and in the short span of human civilization, ...
Though software fundamentals, patterns, and anti-patterns are by far more important and intellectually stimulating to discuss, sometimes it's difficult to move to a new set of terms. When I first learned to program, .NET was pre v1.1 and the java community was getting ready for v1.4. Naturally, I preferred java because of its price, stability, and all my college classes were java. When I got work developing .NET (a few years later) I had to interpret some of the key words from java to .NET. For instance, ...
C# is a wonderful language for modern programming. While everything in C# has a reason and a place, occasionally there are things that can be confusing for a developer who isn’t aware of what is happening behind the scenes. This is my fifth post in the Little Pitfalls series where I explore these issues; the previous Little Pitfall post can be found here. Side Note: I’ll be presenting sessions on the Little Wonders and the Little Pitfalls at the St. Louis Day of .NET conference on August 5th and ...
Recently I began studying for the 70-400, System Center Operations Manager 2007, Configuration. Before I was told that we needed someone certified in SCOM I didn't even know what it was! I began like every student does. I went to www.google.com. I learned that this was a very powerful tool that Microsoft has developed which is part of the System Center product line. This particular piece of software focuses on monitoring and recovery of systems. So instead of realizing that a server is offline, you ...
I recently obtained a Samsung Omnia 7 with the WP7 OS. Straight off the bat - let me say how impressed I am with this phone and how easy it is to use. It took about 3 minutes to have all my Gmail and Facebook contacts loaded and merged and be connected to the Wifi. Another huge plus is the Zune software.This absolutely beats the ITunes for Windows software hands down when it comes to podcasts. Other pluses included the screen being so bright and the physical size of the phone which is comfortable ...
In a number of talks I’ve given, including a session at last year’s Microsoft BI Conference, I’ve mentioned that if you’re not looking at partner offerings in the Microsoft Business Intelligence ecosystem, then you’re not getting the full Microsoft BI picture. This rubs two ways: Microsoft BI may look misleadingly deficient, in comparison to its competitors, if partner solutions are not taken into consideration If you’re an MS BI user and you’re not looking at partner products, your MS BI investment ...
We kick off Day 4 at, you guessed it, another keynote (maybe they should rename this to the Worldwide Partner Keynote Conference?). We kick off with the Canadian Tenors singing some song they wrote for the Vancouver Olympics, and then a parade of partners carrying their country’s flag enters. I feel like I’m at Folklarama back in Winnipeg. ;) So today we have some big names speaking. Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s COO and Sir Richard Branson are on the schedule. Kevin Turner If you have never seen Kevin ...
DISCLAIMER: I did not get this product for free. I bought it with my own money. However, if Razer wants to give me a keyboard for a review then I would gladly accept it. =) Official Product Page While I have been “Searching for the Perfect Developer’s Laptop” I have discovered that PC Gamers have it pretty good. For example, check out my “A Developers Review of Cooler Master Storm Laptop Cooler SF-19” article. Did you notice that this was a Gamers product? Developers actually have something in common ...
LMAX provides a .NET API for automating your financial trading strategy. sign up & download here:http://www.lmaxtrader.... If you can combine software engineering skills + numerical analysis skills + an understanding of financial markets --> the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. You can build products that make money, and you can save money by being a cross-domain expert. http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... - see here to learn more about this lucrative field. A good ...
I really dig video games. It is the reason why I love working with technology. I don’t play games like I used to, but I try and keep up by reading the latest news on the web and by watching Review on the Run. The other day, my video game hobby crossed paths with my professional life with a review on Reviews on the Run where two of the reviewers, Jose Sanchez and Ben Silverman, did a review on a web game that I reference in my recent HTML5 presentations: The World’s Biggest Pacman. I was really excited ...
Welcome to this first instalment of the series! This series of articles is aimed at giving you a hold and a sort of “Best practices” to starting any kind of migrations. Whilst each technology or project has its quirks and traps most of the process you’ll need to go through is, roughly, the same. This first article will describe what’s called the preparation process. Although most IT professionals have the tendency to just into thing (or “forget about the manual, I’ll make it up as I go along!) it ...
Initial troubleshooting As always, one of the first things to check is the event viewer to see if an event was generated detailing the error. Additionally check the %windir%\debug for the adamsetup.log and adamuninstall.log (this last one is only created during the uninstall process). These two logs will tell you where the setup is failing and what should be checked. It also pays to know that setup errors are written to the registry. If you cannot find the following key there was no failure as the ...
Alot of calls I get are related to the information store service of the exchange server not starting. Since troubleshooting why this services does not start is often related to alot of stress (after all, your users and managers will be pounding your door as they cannot access their email) it is always handy to have some reference as to where you can start and what direction it can take. This is my basic modus operandi so feel free to give suggestions on how to improve it :). First of all you need ...
Ron Jeffries challenged me to show how Flow-Design and Event-Based Components can help software development. This is the problem he posed in the Software Craftsmanship discussion group: Solve bowling scoring. Here is the specification. Note that this is a simpler version than the one Bob Martin often uses. I'll take questions if you have any. Given a list of the rolls of a legal game of ten pin bowling, which you may assume are provided without error or omission, produce the total, final, score of ...
The "scour" or Rootkit.Win32.TDSS virus has a long history which can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... Here is the primary symptom: after searching for something in your web browser using google, one of the results that you click on redirects you to scour.com. If you've executed ClamWin, Malwarebytes, McAfee, Norton, etc. to find and isolate the virus without any luck--this isn't really a surprise, since this virus attaches to existing system drivers. I only know of one reliable package ...
Doing CodeKatas is all the rage lately. That´s great since widely accepted exercises are important to further the art. They provide a means of communication across platforms and allow to compare results which is part of any deliberate practice. But CodeKatas suffer from their size. They are intentionally small, so they can be done again and again. Repetition helps to build habit and to dig deeper. Over time ever new nuances of the problem or one´s approach become visible. On the other hand, though, ...
As I discussed in my previous posts, divisions and project teams within Red Gate are allowed a lot of autonomy to manage themselves. It's not just the teams though, there's an awful lot of freedom given to individual employees within the company as well. Reasonableness How Red Gate treats it's employees is embodied in the phrase 'You will be reasonable with us, and we will be reasonable with you'. As an employee, you are trusted to do your job to the best of you ability. There's no one looking over ...
An enterprise application is a software which fulfills 4 core quality attributes: Reliability Flexibility Reusability Maintainability Reliability is the ability of a system or component to perform its required functions under stated conditions for a specific period of time. Because there are no ways more than testing to make sure a system is reliability, we can exchange the term reliability with the term testability. Flexibility is the ability of changing a system's core features without violating ...